Beginning at the north, in the lands where German, Slave, and Dane came into close contact, in _Saxony beyond the Elbe_, the modern _Holstein_, the Slaves held the western coast, and the narrow _Saxon mark_ fenced off the German land. ♦Mark of the Billungs, 960-1106.♦ The Saxon dukes of the house of Billung formed a German mark, which took in the lands reaching from the Elbe to the strait which divides the isle of Rügen from the mainland. But this possession was altogether precarious. ♦Its fluctuations.♦ It again became a Slavonic kingdom; then it was a possession of Denmark; it cannot be looked on as definitely becoming part of the German realm till the thirteenth century. ♦Slavonic princes continue in Mecklenburg.♦ The chief state in these lands which has lasted till later times is the duchy of _Mecklenburg_, the rulers of which, in its two modern divisions, are the only modern princes who directly represent an old Slavonic royal house. Meanwhile a way was opened for a vast extension of German influence through the whole North, by the growth of the city of _Lübeck_. ♦Foundation of Lübeck, 1140-1158.♦ Twice founded, the second time by Henry the Lion Duke of Saxony, it gradually became the leading member of the great merchant League. ♦The Hanse Towns.♦ To the south of these lands come those Slavonic lands which have grown into the modern kingdom of Saxony and the central parts of the modern kingdom of Prussia. ♦Marchlands.♦ These were specially marchlands, a name which some of them have kept down to our own day. ♦Brandenburg. | Lausitz. | Meissen.♦ The mark of _Brandenburg_ in its various divisions, the mark of _Lausitz_ or _Lusatia_, where a Slavonic remnant still lingers, and the mark of _Meissen_, long preserved the memory of the times when these lands, which afterwards came to play so great a part in the internal history of Germany, were still outlying and precarious possessions of the German realm.